In 2017, I started a project called Beeftext, a open-source text substitution tool for Windows. It gained some popularity. According to GitHub, Beeftext has been downloaded nearly 200'000 times. This number includes automatic updates, but it remains quite significant. As I never baked any form of telemetry or observability into the application, I do not have any other metric.
At the time, I was using Alfred, and the snippet feature of the Alfred Power Pack was good enough for me on macOS. But my job was forcing me to spend a lot of time on Windows, where I could not find a free equivalent. I started Beeftext for my personal use, and decided to publish it under an open-source license. I maintained it for roughly 5 years, but in 2022, I was working nearly full time on macOS, and as Beeftext had all the features I wanted, I decided to put it on maintenance mode.
Today, I barely use Windows. I work on several Mac computers, and Alfred does not support synchronization of snippets across several devices. Additionally, coming from a C++ background, I’m moving to Swift and SwiftUI, and the best way to learn a new language is to work on a project that solves a real world problem.
That why I have decided to start developing Shoofler, a text substitution tool for macOS. And I will be documenting the process in this blog.